Page 105 of You’re No Better

All I did was push her.

Mom’s head hits the corner of the Hanovers’ nice, expensive porcelain sink, and she is dead before she hits the floor.

Mom is dead.

I’ve seen enough dead people to know. To recognize the slump and the loll—the way bodies all of a sudden go limp and perfectly still, no breathing no twitching no nothing. I’ve seen it happen before, actually, just like this. When Dad misjudged a blow. One hit to the head can turn someone off like a light switch, instantly snuff out the candle of their brain.

So I know Mom is dead.

And I hate my mother. Some days, I hate her more than my dad. Dad is a monster, and he fucked me up so badly that I’ll probably be broken for the rest of my life, but he did try to help me, in his own way. Mom never did. I ruined her life, and she despised me for it, and she never let me forget it. Dad hurt me, and Mom made me worse.

But I’m still collapsing onto the floor beside her. Grabbing her soft slack-jawed face to look for a single sign of life. Pressing my fingers to her neck to find a pulse that isn’t there.

“Mom,” I whimper. Blood pools sluggishly under her head, seeping through her white knit hat. The choppy curtain bangs she cut to look like mine have slipped free from the hat, framing her face, longer pieces trailing down to the bathroom tile. A strand sticks to her lips. “Mom. Mom?”

She doesn’t respond, because she’s dead.

She’s dead, and I’m crying. Saying Mom like if I say it enough she’ll get up.

I hate my mom, but I don’t want to be alone. I’m scared. Is that what she wants to hear? I’m scared. I’ve always been scared. I’ve been scared my whole life. I don’t understand how anything works, and I’m too ruined to make it out in the world alone. I wanted to get away from her, my brain told me to hurt her, but I never—I never wanted it to happen like this.

Leah is in the powder room with us. She’s holding Felicity’s head in her hands while Felicity chokes and gurgles, their mouth open, the blade stuck through their jaw and piercing the roof of the mouth.

Felicity is reaching up to pull the knife out.

No. No, no, don’t do that, don’t. I stumble across the tiny room, grab their wrist, hold them tight the way they held me in the Winthrop Academy administrative offices. Hands to the chest. Don’t make it worse. Together, carefully, Leah and I tilt their head down so the blood falls out, across their chest and into their lap, instead of down their throat to choke them.

Alyssa screams at her father, “Call a fucking ambulance!”

Dad was right.

When I finally made a mistake, he wasn’t there to save me.

Metropolitan Police Department Washington, DC

Public MPD Document

Incident-Based Event ReportREPORT 19461133